Morning Briefings

We don’t make a conscious decision to turn towards the dark path of deceit. We don’t wake up one day and decide that being a person of good character is overrated. We don’t suddenly develop a penchant for dwelling in a pit. No, departure from integrity is more subtle and insidious than that, like taking a wrong turn and ending up lost–in a bad neighborhood.

– Kristin Armstrong
Living Faith

Armstrong stripped of Olympic bronze medal: Thirteen years after he stood on the podium in Sydney, Lance Armstrong was stripped of his bronze medal from the 2000 Olympics because of doping.

–
The Associated Press

After years of facing all sorts of financial pressures they never expected, from adult kids moving back home to their own parents needing help to retire, empty nest parents are struggling with a new headache. Thinking it was only natural to want to help children and grandchildren, many co-signed student loans. Now, they’re becoming the latest victims of the nation’s mounting problem with student-loan debt, which surpassed the $1 trillion mark last year.

– Kelly Greene, The Wall Street Journal
New Peril for Older Parents: Student Loans They Co-Signed

The people with whom a person works, and especially subordinates, know in a few weeks whether he or she has integrity or not. They may forgive a person for a great deal: incompetence, ignorance, insecurity or bad manners. But they will not forgive a lack of integrity in that person. Nor will they forgive higher management for choosing him.

– Peter F. Drucker
The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

It is in the work of a leader’s hands that the quality and integrity of his heart are put on display.

– Ken Blanchard & Phil Hodges
Lead Like Jesus

It’s easy to be a decent person and to do good as long as it doesn’t cost you anything. It’s when it costs you everything that you have a story that’s inspirational.

– Screenwriter Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Searching for Bobby Fischer) AFI’s 100 Years…100 Cheers

I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an ‘honest man.’

– George Washington

The course of American history demonstrates the difficulties, the struggles and the great intellectual and moral resolve which were demanded to shape a society which faithfully embodied these noble principles. In our time, too, particularly in moments of crisis, Americans continue to find their strength in a commitment to this patrimony of shared ideals and aspirations.

– from the address of Pope Benedict XVI on the White House Lawn, April 16, 2008 as reported by
Whispers in the Loggia

Ethical behavior defines who you really are. If you believe in God, isn’t doing the right thing, honesty, accountability, transparency, humility and consistency all supposed to be our behavioral standard every day because He sees all?

– Mike Paul
The Reputation Doctor

Let no leader discount the value of personal loyalty or forget the importance of cultivating personal trust and affection, for when needed, it is the most precious thing in the world.

– Richard D. Phillips
The Heart of an Executive: Lessons on Leadership from the Life of King David